


Threads

by elfin



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfin/pseuds/elfin
Summary: While 'undercover' as Warlock's nanny, Crowley's aware of being watched.





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this for a couple of weeks. It's not perfect but if I don't post it I'll never finish the other 666 ideas that are bouncing around in my brain for these two lovely characters. 
> 
> Spoilers for the book / series, but not really. 
> 
> (I don't actually think Crowley's nanny outfit is tweed, but Michael's right - he does look disturbingly attractive in it.)

‘I’m warning you. If you ever turn up to meet me wearing that outfit, I will deny your entire existence. Ever knowing you.’

Aziraphale looks at himself in the mirror. ‘Why? Exactly?’

‘Because the teeth, the eyebrows and the beard make parts of me that are supposed to be on the outside want to crawl inside and never come back out.’

‘Ugh. Right. Well. Thank you for the vote of confidence. What are you wearing then? Show me me your Nanny outfit. I’m sure you’ll look equally as… unattractive dressed as a middle aged woman with a penchant for discipline.’

Crowley smiles, slowly, serpentine. ‘Oh, you’ll see.’

~

Back from the house after a long day of miraculously saving a rose bush (which hadn’t been dead-headed in its life), talking to a strawberry bush in completely the opposite way he knows Crowley talks to his plants and showing young Warlock how wonderful and precious all life is, Aziraphale considers opening the shop for half an hour, then decides against it. He’s frustrated and tired, just wants a drink, something good to eat and to settle down with a good book. He locks the door because that won’t stop Crowley from entering when he gets here. They’ve arranged to go for dinner, to compare notes. There’ll be a table free at a lovely little Turkish place a short walk from the bookshop. 

Crowley’s role always finishes later in the day than Aziraphale’s, because he has to put the kid to bed, at least when his parents are off on some diplomatic trip abroad or attending a charity fundraiser dinner, always dressed to the nines with her loaded down in expensive gems and him with a gold watch so big he’s surprised he can lift a fork. Aziraphale can’t, for the life of him, work out why they bothered having a child in the first place. Part of the Great Plan no doubt. He can’t think of any other reason, it’s not as if they show any interest in him. 

The little bell over the door rings once while Aziraphale’s making tea. The bell’s main function is to announcing the presence of an unwelcome customer, but in this case, it’s announcing the arrival of a demon who’s always welcome whether Aziraphale admits it or not.

’Crowley?’

‘Yeah. Sorry I’m late. The boy wouldn’t go to sleep, wanted a bedtime story.’ He says it in the same disgusted tone as others might say ‘wanted to dissect a frog before he went to bed’.

The kettle reaches the boil but he’s already abandoned his mug for a couple of glasses and a cheeky Pinot. An aperitif before dinner. ’What did you read him?’

‘Eugenie de Franval. Well, the first half. He fell asleep.’

‘The Marquis de Sade? Crowley! You don’t think you might be-‘ Crowley steps around the book stacks and whatever Aziraphale was going to say is lost as his brain short-circuits. 

Crowley eyebrows furrow into his small oval sunglasses at the angel’s expression. ‘What?’

‘Your… clothes.’ He’s still in the dark tweed suit, the matching jacket and ankle-long skirt, that he’s chosen as the outfit for his stint as nanny to the anti-christ. His long fiery hair is in large, tight curls framing his face. 

He glances down at himself and swears brightly. ‘Forgot I was even dressed like this!’

With a snap of his fingers, he’s back to his habitual black; jeans, jacket, shirt, glasses returned to their usual steampunk style by his favourite designer. Aziraphale absolutely doesn’t suggest that he didn’t have to change on his behalf. He doesn’t even think it. 

~

Crowley avoids Aziraphale when they’re at the house in the same way he avoided the plague in the 14th century. 

It’s not because he doesn’t think they should be seen together - although that would raise questions - but because he thinks Aziraphale’s gardener costume makes him look like a malformed Harry Potter character. He’s heard about Harry Potter because he got a pat on the back for the marketing strategy, while Aziraphale got a commendation for inspiration. Neither of them had anything to do with it, although they were both in Edinburgh for the festival at the right time. 

He’s had _feelings_ for Aziraphale for as long as he can remember, and there’s something about the way he looks, like a farmer from a nursery rhyme had relations with a hamster and this was the result, that makes a small subset of those feelings curl in on themselves with discomfort. 

He is aware, however, of being watched. At first he thinks maybe Hastur and Ligur are keeping tabs on him, checking he’s doing his job. It wouldn’t surprise him after the lukewarm reception he gave the baby anti-christ when they’d handed over the basket in that dank graveyard five years ago, that and his obvious lack of enthusiasm for the whole armageddon thing.

But he’d be able to sense them, Aziraphale would too, if they were hanging around the grounds. He asks the angel one evening, and he says he hasn’t seen, heard or smelt anything remotely demonic except for Crowley, in fact it’s one of the reasons he’s a little bit concerned about the entire situation. Crowley assures him that the antichrist is naturally camouflaged, particularly to them, just in case an angel - or a demon for that matter - gets the idea into their head to attempt to avert armageddon by killing the little brat. 

‘Can’t think why they’d imagine that might happen,’ Aziraphale responds, voice dripping with sarcasm. Crowley rolls his eyes behind his glasses but otherwise ignores him.

Then, one afternoon, while he’s reading to Adam from Charles Baudelaire, he glances out of the window to see white robes in the distance, a flash of white-blond hair, and he suddenly realises it isn’t his side who’s watching him. It’s the angel himself.

He doesn’t mention it to Aziraphale, but now he’s attuned to it, he knows when it’s happening and it happens a lot. One afternoon after a visit to a Satanist church on the outskirts of Watford, Crowley asks Warlock if the gardener has mentioned her at all. Warlock, who’s an inquisitive boy if he can be described as anything, responds in the way most five year old kids probably would: ‘The gardener smells funny, why would he mention you? You don’t smell funny. You smell… like my dad.’

Crowley decides he really doesn’t like the cocky little bastard, but he can’t decide whether that’s a good sign or a bad one. 

 

Their roles don’t change for the next few years and they settle into a routine. The timescale is an eye blink to them, but it doesn’t mean Crowley can’t have fun with it. His costume never varies. Aziraphale doesn’t stop watching him. So now and again he turns up to the shop at night dressed in the tweed, amuses himself when Aziraphale stammers as he points out Crowley’s ‘mistake’, and he changes with feigned apology. He’s careful never to get close enough to Aziraphale when he’s in character, never close enough to let the awful details get trapped in his head.

This goes on until their last day, until the end of their time in the Dowlings’ employ, a week before Adam’s eleventh birthday. Crowley leaves the house early, but waits until he’s sure the angel has left too, and has had enough time to return home, to change back to his vest, undershirt, waistcoat, trousers, and whatever else goes into making up the look that’s more familiar to Crowley now than his own reflection. 

Aziraphale has never been fashionable by anyone’s standards, but his look is his own and it’s how he’s looked since Crowley woke in 1383 and paid him a visit him for the first time that century. The neck scarves were a particularly nice touch, in his opinion. And he still has fond memories and a few choice fantasies, about the ruff Aziraphale had taken to wearing around the sixteen-fifties, probably to impress Shakespeare. 

He timed his arrival at the bookshop just right. It was dark out, it had been raining. Soho looked damp and cold, not a night anyone would want to be out in. He even checked the line of his stockings before opening the door of the shop and closing it, locking it behind him.

‘Crowley?’ 

The angel pokes his head up from where he appears to be under a table and for a moment, Crowley forgets himself.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Searching for a… thing. You’ve forgotten to change again, my dear.’

Drawing himself up to his full height in the low heeled shoes, Crowley crosses his hands in front of himself and peers through the tiny round glasses at his friend. ‘Not this time, angel. It’s my last day at the Dowling’s, my last day as nanny. I thought you might want one, last look.’

It’s fascinating to watch Aziraphale become more flustered with every second that ticks by, but he stands his ground. Whatever’s lost under the table will remain there for the time being. Aziraphale gets to his feet, wipes his hands on his trousers and looks anywhere but at Crowley.

‘I honestly don’t know what you’re… why you’d even think that I want to see you dressed in that fine Scottish tweed, from the Isle of Harris if I’m not mistaken, dark barleycorn, perhaps? Tailor made.’ Crowley’s expression slips slightly as he realises he might just have made a mistake.

‘How do you know…?’

‘It’s a beautiful cloth, Crowley. I was interested. I looked it up.’ The cloth, he thinks, of course. It deflates him to think Aziraphale’s spent eleven years yearning after the suit he’s been wearing for the design and not because he’s been wearing it. 

‘Well.’ He swallows his disappointment. ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of it. It itches like poison ivy.’ 

He’s about to change when Aziraphale holds up one hand, ‘Wait,’ and the next thing Crowley knows, Aziraphale’s close enough to put his hand on the fitted tweed jacket, to run his fingertips along the weave of the cloth. Crowley freezes. He can remember each and every time that Aziraphale has touched him and no touch has lasted as long as this one. 

‘What are you wearing underneath?’ Aziraphale enquires, and Crowley’s hopes pick up again. 

‘Black silk shirt, grey silk stockings.’ He pauses for effect. ‘Nothing else.’

Aziraphale looks scandalised. ‘Nothing?’

‘With a skirt this tight? The VPL would be visible.’

‘VPL?’

This might be the best day of Crowley’s very long life. ‘Visible panty line, angel.’ He shakes his hair out, because he doubts the tight curls are doing anything for him. It’s been years since he’s kept his hair as long as it is at the moment, he watches Aziraphale’s eyes get drawn to it. ‘I didn’t want underwear spoiling the line of the skirt. Besides, it’s not as if I usually wear any.’

‘What… not ever?’

‘Why would I? As I understand it, these days as long as you’re not baring all in public, anything goes. I’ve been to fashion shows.’

Aziraphale’s eyes go somewhere far away for a moment and Crowley wonders what he’s thinking. It could be anything from, ‘I say, doesn’t it get rather chilly’, to ‘you mean to say, all these times we’ve sat together, there was only a zipper between me and, well, you?’ And if he’s being honest with himself, it’s more likely to be towards the first rather than the second. Which is a crying shame, but no more than it has been for the last millennia. 

He used to think he had all the time in the world to turn Aziraphale to his way of thinking; that they’d be bloody amazing together if they gave the physical things that human couples did a try. Now he may well have so little time, he isn’t sure it’s worth pursuing. He enjoys the angel’s company and that’s enough, really. Has been for six thousand years, give or take. It’s one thing to tease Aziraphale with something he wants but won’t allow himself to have, it’s another to tease himself with something he very much wants but is highly unlikely he’s never going to get.

He loses his nerve. ‘I’m going to change, angel.’ 

‘No.’ Aziraphale looks at him, directly at him, unnervingly meets a gaze he surely can’t see and shakes his head. ‘Don’t. I would like to… divest you of it. If you wouldn’t mind?’

He feels like cheering, yelling, screaming, laughing. He does none of those things. ’I don’t. But I would like to know… is this about me or the tweed?’

‘Oh, my dear. I appreciate good cloth and a well tailored suit as much as the next… well, angel, but it’s you under it all. All this time you’ve dressed… like you, naturally, but this… this is different.’ His fingers linger on the edges of the red bow tie. ‘May I?’

Crowley nods because he doesn’t trust his voice not to fail him. Aziraphale pulls on the ends and it falls open, because a demon can tie a bow tie, thank you very much. He pops each button on his jacket then each one on his shirt. Crowley’s heart is beating so hard, he’s astonished the angel can’t hear it. He could stop it, but he doesn’t want to, because it’s pushing his blood somewhere interesting and he wants Aziraphale to know the effect his painfully slow exploration is having.

‘Why did you choose this particular outfit?’ he asks.

‘Have you seen The Omen?’ Aziraphale shakes his head. ‘I watched it, went for the same ‘nanny to the anti-christ’ look.

‘Which is?’

‘Starched.’

He feels almost the opposite of that now as Aziraphale unpeels his clothing. He’s on his knees now and Crowley’s legs are locked in place. Sure, some of his imaginings have had the angel on his knees, but they’ve been much further along in the scenario. Never, in his wildest dreams (and he’s had time enough to dream up almost everything) has Aziraphale been on his knees with his fingers deftly unzipping an ankle-length tweed skirt and working it off Crowley’s hips. This is far from what he’s spent centuries fantasising about that suddenly, without warning, it’s all too much.

‘Stop.’

Aziraphale jerks back, lifting his hands away and up, eyes coming up to meet Crowley’s. ‘I’m sorry….’

‘No.’ His own indecisiveness, his own fear, makes his form ripple, tweed turning to black denim and cotton for a moment before reverting back.

‘Please, don’t. Just… wait.’ He reaches up, takes Crowley’s hand. ‘You’ve wanted me at least since the sixties. You’ve been parading around in this outfit for five years, driving me slowly insane, I might add.’ He smiles, and Crowley feels something inside him unknot. ‘We’re not doing anything worse than what we’ve been doing since our first lunch in Rome.’ He strokes his thumb over Crowley’s knuckles, back and forth. ‘It’s the step you’ve been waiting for me to take, possibly for longer than I realise. If we’ve failed, if the world ends, I don’t want to regret not having showed you… how much you mean to me.’

Crowley’s back in the tweed, one of Aziraphale’s hands in his, one still at the waistband of his skit. He squeezes the angel’s fingers and nods once. The zippered waist band falls over his hips and puddles to the floor. Aziraphale takes his time with the thick grey stockings, rolling them down his legs, pulling them off his feet. 

It’s strangely exhilarating, standing half-naked in front of someone as completely clothed as Aziraphale. He has no idea what to do or say, so when the angel shuffles forward on his knees and takes Crowley’s erection into his mouth, he almost falls over. He puts one hand back to steady himself on a handy pillar, the other hand resting in the soft tufts of white blond hair.

He opens his mouth, but all the words trip over themselves on their way out and what he says is unintelligible. Still, it makes Aziraphale smile around his cock, draw his tongue along the underside and drag his teeth ever so gently over the topside. It’s going to be fast and it’s going to be embarrassing, because Crowley has never done this before, and he’s no idea how to control these particular bodily functions, even less than he can control the chaos and overload of sensation along his nerves.

He tries to warn Aziraphale with a pull on his head, but the angel locks his lips around the base of Crowley’s erection and sucks, and Crowley’s body seems to go haywire for an excruciating, incredible moment; muscles spasming, mind flaring. He slides down the pillar at his back and lands heavy on the floor, Aziraphale smiling at him smugly, licking his lips like he’s tasted something he really wants to taste again.

‘How… how was it?’ Crowley wants to know. He wants to know by tasting Aziraphale. But for the moment… ‘Can I?’

It takes a second, but Aziraphale catches on quickly. ‘Of course.’ He shifts over until he’s practically sitting in Crowley’s lap, puts his hands either side of Crowley’s face, and kisses him. It’s not chaste, not soft. The angel’s tongue sweeps into Crowley’s mouth, sharing. 

When he sits back, hands still framing Crowley’s face, the tweed’s gone, silk, cotton and denim back where it belongs.

‘Um. Salty.’

‘Do you think we both taste the same?’

Crowley taps his fingers against the front of Aziraphale’s shirt. ’I was hoping to find out.’

‘Don’t we have an apocalypse to stop?’

‘Nothing we can do for the next seven days.’

Aziraphale grins. ‘Well, in that case, maybe we should adjourn to my bedroom.’

‘Lead the way. Don’t mind if I crawl, do you? I’m not sure my legs will work.’

The angel helps him to his feet, slides an arm around his waist and just that alone is so nice….

‘You know, if there’s anything in particular you want me to wear for you…?’

Crowley shakes his head. ‘I was rather hoping to get you out of your clothes. Although I’m not sure long that’s going to take….’ He feels a sharp kick to his shin and wraps his own arm around Aziraphale, squeezing gently. ‘You know I think you’re practically edible in whatever you wear?’

‘Even the neck ruff?’

Something warm floods Crowley’s body again, and he feels even more light headed. ‘Well, actually, now you come to mention it….’


End file.
